ABOUT THIS BOOK...

A candid, colorful, and comprehensive oral history that reveals the secrets of Silicon Valley — from the origins of Apple and Atari to the present day clashes of Google and Facebook, and all the start-ups and disruptions that happened along the way.

Drawing on over two hundred in-depth interviews, VALLEY OF GENIUS takes readers from the dawn of the personal computer and the internet, through the heyday of the web, up to the very moment when our current technological reality was invented. It interweaves accounts of invention and betrayal, overnight success and underground exploits, to tell the story of Silicon Valley like it has never been told before. Read it to discover the stories that Valley insiders tell each other: the tall tales that are all, improbably, true.

reviews

“This is the most important book on Silicon Valley I’ve read in two decades. It will take us all back to our roots in the counterculture, and will remind us of the true nature of the innovation process, before we tried to tame it with slogans and buzzwords.”

— Po Bronson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nudist on the Late Shift and Nurtureshock

“Based on more than 200 interviews and bristling with facts, personalities, and gossip, [Fisher’s] inside account brings to life the ‘future obsessed and forward thinking’ culture that gave life to our current digitized world...An immensely readable account of America’s wild cauldron of innovation.”

THE AUTHOR

adam fisher

Adam Fisher grew up in Silicon Valley playing Atari, programming computers, and reading science fiction. He still lives in the Bay Area but now spends his time thinking about the future, tracing its origins, and writing about it – for Wired, MIT Tech Review, and The New York Times Sunday Magazine. Thank you for reading my book!

Note on Sources

The vast majority of the words found in Valley of Genius originate in interviews, over two hundred, that I conducted especially for this book. When getting an interview wasn't possible I tried, with some success, to unearth previously unpublished interviews and quote from them. And in a few cases I’ve resorted to quoting interviews that have been published before. A full list of these secondary sources can be found at...